Untraceability in mobile networks
Didier Samfat, Refik Ahmet Molva, N. Asokan · 1995
User mobilityis a feature that raises many new security-related issues and concerns.One of them is the disclosure of a mobile user's reai identity during the authentication process, or other procedures specific to mobile networks.Such disclosure allows an unauthorized third-party to track the m.obile user's movements and current whereabouts.Depending ou the context, access to auy information related to a mobile user's location without his consent can be a serious violation of his privacy.This new issue might be seen as a conflicting requirement with respect to authentication: untraceability requires hiding the user's identity while authentication requires the user's identity to be revealed in order to be proved.What is needed is a single mechanism reconciling both authentication and privacy of a mobile user's identification.The basic :solution to this problem is the use of uliases.Aliases insure untraceability by hiding the user's real identity as well as his relationship with domain authorities.In this paper, we present a classification scheme to identify the various degrees of untraceability requirements.We then present an efficient method for the computation of aliases and apply It to a new set of inter-domain authentication protocols.We demonstrate that these protocols can be designed to meet various degrees of untraceability requirements.In designing these protocols, we try to avoid the drawbacks of authentication protoc:ols in existing mobile network architectures such as CDPD and GSM.